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    TrumpsTinyHandsBreanna Edwards
    3/15/17 2:26pm

    <rant>

    FGM is fucked up and any shithead who thinks “cultural tolerance” means we should allow this nonsense is as dumb as a box of rocks. I don’t care which God you believe in or which book you think is holy; stop fucking with girls’ private parts you sick fuck.

    </end rant>

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      10110101101TrumpsTinyHands
      3/15/17 4:06pm

      Tolerance ends where our laws are broken - it’s that simple. And since every one of these countries where genital mutilation is still being practiced joined the UN and has thus vowed to abide by the UN human rights declaration, those laws literally extend to the entire planet. Genital mutilation violates four of the first five articles of the declaration.

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      LoremIpsum010101TrumpsTinyHands
      3/15/17 4:24pm

      Yeah, seriously. People who equate being tolerant of a Mosque being built down the street with allowing genital mutilation are just looking for excuses for their own bigotry.

      Especially when so many Mosques are stunningly beautiful buildings.

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    Hoyo AfrikaBreanna Edwards
    3/15/17 1:58pm

    In 1991, a few months before we departed the UAE for the West (Somalia’s government had collapsed and our lovely Arab hosts told us to GTFO), my father and (step)mother arranged for a woman to come by the house. I answered the door for this woman. She still comes across very vividly in my memories. My brother and I were parked in front of the TV in the living room whilst my sisters (who were about 7 and 8 at this time) were sequestered in one of the bedrooms. What followed were hours of little girls screaming and my mother demanding they keep quiet. My brother and I watched Hulk Hogan on TV body slam some other wrestler whilst my father carried baby tubs of bloodied water to and fro the bathroom. I suppose I’ve mentally blocked out the screaming because whenever I revisit the episode, it only appears to me with complete silence.

    By the time we arrived in Holland, my mother, who was pregnant with my youngest sister, was told by doctors, social workers and immigration officials that she could risk deportation if she ever performed the cutting on her unborn daughter. Since my biological mother had never gotten around to circumcising me, she asked them if it was legal to circumcise boys in the Netherlands. I remember the doctor’s smirk appearing as he said: Natuurlijk! En je kan het doen in een ziekenhuis met staatgeld! (Of course, you can do it in a hospital with public funds).

    The cutting of girls is an ancient ritual practiced in my country as a way of demanding a young girl know her place and to signal to boys that modifying a girl’s body for the pleasure of men is his god-given right.

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      Cali4lifeHoyo Afrika
      3/15/17 2:18pm

      Thank you for this personal account of this horror inflicted on girls by men who think they are the image of god. And I’m sorry for that day and those memories.

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      Hoyo AfrikaCali4life
      3/15/17 2:33pm

      When my sister, the younger of the two, got married in the early 2000's, she told me she had gone to the doctor to fix the cutting. I cocked my head and asked her why she never had it undone before (she had gone to doctors on her own since she 15-16)? I assumed she had the procedure reversed (which is possible since in Somalia they shave off the tip of the clitoris but apparently there is more of the clitoris inside the female body). She said she simply had her labias separated. This woman has several children by now and I cannot imagine the production and deliverance of those children was in any way painless.

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    SweetJamesJonesBreanna Edwards
    3/15/17 3:48pm

    America: Mutilate a girl, get jail time. DON’T mutilate a boy and its socially unacceptable...

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      ariesdragon123SweetJamesJones
      3/15/17 7:07pm

      Circumcision and Female Genital Mutilation are not the same thing. Men and women’s parts are different, and those procedures don’t result in the same physical or social impacts. I’m not saying that circumcision isn’t wrong, I’m saying the comparison is a false equivalency. And making the bad comparison, on an article about FGM, really doesn’t help the case against circumcision.

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      SweetJamesJonesariesdragon123
      3/16/17 12:33am

      Both are cutting the genitalia. Both are painful. In both cases, the child is not given a choice.

      You may want it to be different, but its exactly the same thing. Both should have you put in jail.

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    PhoneBurnerElmoBreanna Edwards
    3/15/17 2:31pm

    There was a This American Life episode about a young woman who had undergone this. I accidentally started listening to it at work and, well, let’s just say the rest of the day wasn’t very productive. I think worse than the actual description of the even was the pain as she described how difficult her life has been because of it.

    I don’t understand how people do this to each other.

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    TheBlightOfGreyBreanna Edwards
    3/15/17 3:41pm

    Too bad about that 8th amendment thing, because the punishment should be they cut off the guy’s dick. That’d put an end to FGM in this country real fast.

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    redjellydonutBreanna Edwards
    3/15/17 5:32pm

    A deportation I can get behind.

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